Drinking sweat
The AI system that suggested “Sweat” as a product name by combining “sweet” and “eat” (5 May, p 19) was on the mark but behind the times. Pocari Sweat is a popular Japanese soft drink launched in 1980.
I first tried it in South Korea and rather like it.
Lucky us?
I totally accept that human evolution is down to luck, (9 June, p 34). The big question is was it good or bad luck?
Hairless hell
Baldness, and particularly premature baldness, is a serious problem, and your article (16 June, p 44), reminded me of the grief that I suffered as a young man because of this affliction.
I started going bald in my early twenties in the 1950s, when “Teddy boys” and the likes of Elvis Presley made fancy and abundant hairstyles all the rage. For me it was a very, very traumatic time.
There is no clear and obvious evolutionary advantage to going bald, and there are many, some serious, disadvantages.
Therefore, the sooner a cure for this disfiguring affliction is found the better.
Size of a bus
So the NuSTAR X-ray telescope unfolds to the length of a school bus (16 June, p 6). What’s the difference between an ordinary bus and a school bus? Is it like American gallons and UK gallons? Ten metres, as mentioned later in the article, will do fine, thank you.
On a plus note, I suppose at least I now know how long a school bus is.
The editor writes:
• That would be a yellow, American school bus of course, a little longer than a British bus.
Gender divide?
Kayt Sukel’s feature on the differences between male and female brains states: “Men still outnumber women in mathematics, engineering and many areas of science… [women] start lagging behind as they grow up and enter further education” (26 May, p 44).
Yes, no doubt – but has any work been done on the effect of separating the genders? Within all-girls’ schools, many continue with physics and mathematics post age 16, gain very high grades in their exams, and then begin engineering degrees. Perhaps the problem occurs when, at university, they first encounter mixed-gender laboratories.
On the seventh day…
In a similar vein to Bill Straub’s letter on faith and reason (19 May, p 33), I was a church parish councillor and also a biology teacher. A new student told me she was a “born-again Christian” and that her parents did not want me to teach her evolution.
This made me rethink my faith. My lifetime of conditioned belief evaporated in days. I now warn evangelists and doorstep religion sellers not to think about the ideas behind what they are doing, or to look for new pastimes if they do.
Angels and demons
In your article “Welcome to the Escher-verse”, Lisa Grossman refers to the Escher illustration shown as containing angels and bats (9 June, p 8).
A closer look calls into question their description as bats. This piece, sometimes known as Angels and Demons, offers a contrast between good and evil, light and darkness, not supernatural beings and small flying mammals.
The editor writes:
• Its official title is the slightly less descriptive Circle Limit IV.
Sounds familiar
Your editorial on skeuomorphs (9 June, p 3) – design features added to new devices to mimic familiar old tech – brought to mind good advice from my late mother: “Don’t throw away old shoes before you have new ones.”
Until sounds and images evolve that better describe the action portrayed, such as the click of a camera shutter, or until users no longer recognise them as such, it seems a good idea to keep them.
Ripe old age
Philosopher Mary Midgley, aged 90, says that the focus on extending human lifespan should be questioned (16 June, p 29). It is particularly irritating to those of us trying to find cures for the diseases and disabilities of old age to read the same, tired nonsense trotted out to defend this position. I would like everyone to be healthy and alert enough at 90 or older to be able to be interviewed for 91av. If that means they get to live longer, then hurrah!
Taming the bulls
With regard to your review of John Coates’s interesting book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (9 June, p 48), there is a much more elegant way to curb the testosterone-charged excesses of the younger male bankers and financiers than castration or drafting in older men.
Simply hook them up to a device that continuously monitors hormone levels and, if they get too cocky, injects a healthy dose of prolactin.
This will have the dual benefit of stabilising markets and helping punters to select a reliable financial adviser: the new advice would be, go for the one with the biggest man boobs.
No language problem
In his letter, Claudio Gino reports that his multilingual daughters had no speaking problems, but he said he knows of three children who had learning problems that stopped when their parents concentrated on one language only (9 June, p 33).
Learning problems occur among both monolingual and multilingual children, and there is no evidence that they are more common in bilingual children.
Whiter skies
Further to your report on engineering a cooler atmosphere (9 June, p 5), artificial sky whitening already imposes tangible local cooling on west Wales. Lying under a transatlantic flight path, we often suffer contrails. Once these reach a certain density, one feels the loss of solar energy: beach visitors often leave mid-afternoon because it has “turned chilly”.
There are further implications: farmers insist that before mass jet travel this region had “more of an edge” in terms of early potatoes and spring flowers.
Sea sickness
Letter writer Lee Seldon could be right to blame sleeper cell behaviour for his repeated infection by Burkholderia pseudomallei despite antibiotic treatment (19 May, p 33).
A more common example of bacterial survival strategy is that of faecal coliforms and faecal streptococci when discharged to the sea from sewage treatment plants. Faced with sea temperatures of perhaps 15 to 20 °C after leaving a human gut at about 37 °C, and following an even warmer environment at the plant, these microbes go into a state of suspended animation, often for weeks, until imbibed by an unsuspecting bather, whereupon they revive.
Cosmic mystery
Your report on Japanese researchers finding unusually high levels of carbon-14 in cedar tree rings laid down between AD 774 and 775 speculates whether a gigantic solar flare or a series of weaker flares over a couple of years might be responsible (9 June, p 17).
Might Chinese astronomical records help? Also, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records AD 773 or 774 as the year when “a red cross was seen in the sky after sunset”.
Eureka moments
I have a better solution to the first of the Eureka! puzzles featured in your look at creative daydreaming (16 June, p 34). The problem is to correct the equation laid out in 13 sticks as “III=III+III” by moving only one stick. My solution is VI=III+III. True, the V would be asymmetrical, but hey, it’s better than the given answer: III=III=III.
From Elizabeth Romanaux
By now I am sure others have pointed out alternative solutions to the Eureka! puzzles. Move the vertical matchstick from the plus sign and place it diagonally across the equal sign. Now it reads “three is not equal to three minus three”.
Jersey City, New Jersey, US
The editor writes:
• While the first of these alternative solutions would technically require two matchstick movements to form the numeral V properly, the second solution cannot be argued with. In both cases, we applaud your creative thinking.
Space ace
May I offer a counterpoint to the criticism of NASA in Neil Craig’s letter for “expecting to have to rely on the Russians” for resupply missions to the International Space Station (9 June, p 33).
I congratulate NASA for its excellent timing in spinning off proven technologies to the private sector in order to minimise costs, choosing instead to focus on the highly complex research and development that will continue to drive space exploration in a way that no other organisation on this planet has the capacity to do.
The existing, limited service of the Russians was there to fill the gap, allowing for cost saving by the early retirement of the shuttle. Elon Musk and SpaceX’s accomplishment of a crewless mission to the ISS builds on the shoulders of giants.
Bloodletting benefit?
You reported research showing that blood donation is good for your health, based on a study in BMC Medicine, where the risks of stroke and heart attack fell in overweight donors, through a reduction in blood pressure (2 June, p 5).
Does that mean those old barber-surgeons and early physicians were right? Bloodletting was one of the most common tools in their armamentarium. It seems it may have been useful after all.